Project OTIS Update: Concept Art

Student at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online DivisionIGDA (International Game Developers Association) Member

Members of IGDA are currently in the process of developing their own 2D RPG. In this entry, Valencia discusses where they are in the process.

Project OTIS is moving right along! As of now we have settled on a game idea and story, and are officially finished with the springboard phase. The game is a 2D RPG set in the Steam Punk era. The project, titled as code name: Otis, is about a rugged world that is hastily drying up - specifically the water wells, which is a significant resource not only for survival, but for the steam era. A young mechanic/inventor named Elijah and his robot Otis, which possesses special abilities, are set out to discover what is going on when their city well suddenly goes dry. Along the way they will meet increasingly difficult foes and new characters that will join their party and help advance the story as they find out who is behind the pandemonium.

Currently we are reinforcing the story and working out the major milestones that will transpire throughout the game. At the same time we have begun the character and prop concept drawings and are moving along with the initial designs. We are also pushing forward with the XNA Starter Kit to create our game for the Windows operating system, but we would like to eventually publish this on Xbox also depending on our resources and capabilities. The XNA game engine will allow us to build the RPG by replacing the default assets with our own. It also allows us to add our own animations and tweak player stats using the build parameters. Scripting and programming is by the SDK. But there is plenty that we can pursue with this alone. We are in the testing phase and trying to publish a prototype just to see what the capabilities fo the SDK are. I hope to have more results by our next IGDA meeting.

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